Abstract: Atmospheric correction impacts on the accuracy of satellite image-based land cover classification are a growing concern among scientists. In this study, the principle objective was to enhance classification accuracy by minimizing contamination effects from aerosol scattering in Landsat TM images due to the variation in solar zenith angle corresponding to cloud-free earth targets. We have derived a mathematical model for aerosols to compute and subtract the aerosol scattering noise per pixel of different vegetation classes from TM images of Nicolet in north-eastern Wisconsin. An algorithm in C++ has been developed with iterations to simulate, model, and correct for the solar zenith angle influences on scattering. Results from a supervised classification with corrected TM images showed increased class accuracy for land cover types over uncorrected images. The overall accuracy of the supervised classification was improved substantially (between 13% and 18%). The z-score shows significant difference between the corrected data and the raw data (between 4.0 and 12.0). Therefore, the atmospheric correction was essential for enhancing the image classification.

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